


Familiarity

by privatesnarker



Series: Werewoofs [1]
Category: Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Animal Abuse, Blood, Familiars, M/M, Magic, Major Character Injury, Misunderstandings, Telepathy, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vampires, Werewolves, Wizards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-28 17:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20430053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/privatesnarker/pseuds/privatesnarker
Summary: “God, I wish I were a dog.” The dog looks back attentively from where it has laid down, ears playing like a horse. Weird little fellow.“You don’t have to read through a whole library of dusty books written in awful handwriting by half-crazed warlocks, on the off chance you might find a discipline that suits you, huh, buddy?” The dog gives a vague tail wag, like it’s not quite sure what reaction is expected. Luckily, Atticus does not require feedback to air his grievances, a silent audience is more than enough.Or: In a Verona ruled by vampires, werewolves, and (ostensibly) wizards, young Atticus Della Scala befriends a dog. And then, quite accidentally, Benvolio Montague. And then, because this is Verona, shit hits the fan.





	1. Dog

**Author's Note:**

> Who doesn't love a good Furs versus Fangs story? Nobody, is who! Throw in some wizardry and a hard magical system and you have the building blocks for this story.
> 
> Also, this is another work inspired by the idea that since the actors playing the Prince are often the same age as the ones playing the Montague and Capulet kids, they might actually be of a similar age in-universe too.

It is a beautiful day in summer when Atticus decides he’s had enough. He already has to do all his reigning and governing and audience-ing inside the stuffy palace, there really is no need to spend his so-called free time going stir-crazy while suffocating in a study. So he takes the book on elemental magic written by his great-great-grandfather Septimus (tome 3 of 7), the book of annotations written by his grandfather, the latest late Prince of Verona, in order to make sense of what Septimus had to say, and his own notes making sense of his grandfather’s annotations, and he goes to sit in the backyard. Unlike the colossal front yard, this one’s small, a little space tiled with stone slabs reachable by a winding path from the gardens, but only for those who know it’s there; it has a big linden tree to give shade, a small stone bench for sitting on, and vine-covered walls for the whole world to know it should fuck off. It’s nice. Atticus spends a few moments just sitting and breathing, before dragging his mind back to the fascinating subject of geomancy. Well, fascinating perhaps if written about by anyone but great-great-grandpa Septimus, whose only passion in life seems to have been the murdering of as many supernatural beings as possible, with elemental magic the thing he wrote about for prestige and with a total lack of enthusiasm whenever there wasn’t any murdering to do. Fifteen highly frustrating minutes later, Atticus still isn’t sure how the spell he is supposed to teach himself works, or why he should care.

“Yeah, right,” he grumbles, putting aside the book of unhelpful commentary, “maybe I should give up and just go be a farmer if I want to do things with earth. It seems they have it all figured out already, no need for spells and bullshit.”

He stretches his complaining back, and ends up mesmerized by the linden leaves softly swaying in the breeze. It really is nice out here. Plus, if any creature of a familial disposition were to come looking for one Atticus, Prince of Verona, here he would be, all accessible and easy to find. Better late than never, right?

He looks back down, and there’s a dog by the wall off the gardens, a yellow street mongrel, watching him warily.

“Hey, buddy,” Atticus says, “come in through the fence, didn’t you?” The high wrought-iron gate and fence are made to keep out wolves, but this mutt is no bigger than a small sheep dog, although with the big blocky head of a cow herder. It’s still dawdling by the wall, like it has reason to mistrust a human, even though from what Atticus can tell it looks decently healthy and well-fed. Maybe it doesn’t feel like crossing the sun-baked stone slabs from one shadow area to the next.

“Come on, buddy, no need to be scared.” The dog approaches slowly, upcurled tail wagging in hesitant friendliness. Its legs seem attached more to the sides of its barrel-chested body than the underside, so the walk is really a waddle; there must be a bulldog somewhere in its confused family line, but also something to account for the dark markings appearing here and there amidst the sandy fur, and something responsible for the dishevelled lion mane around its neck and chest.

“You’re an ugly bugger, aren’t you?” The dog has reached the shadow under the linden tree and sits, a respectful distance away, tongue lolling in the heat. The markings on its face look like dark eye rings, with a dark nose to go with them.

“No closer? Alright, suit yourself.”

Atticus looks back onto his notes, sighs, and decides to read the description of the spell for the eight millionth time.

Nope.

“God, I wish I were a dog.” The dog looks back attentively from where it has laid down, ears playing like a horse. Weird little fellow.

“You don’t have to read through a whole library of dusty books written in awful handwriting by half-crazed warlocks, on the off chance you might find a discipline that suits you, huh, buddy?” The dog gives a vague tail wag, like it’s not quite sure what reaction is expected. Luckily, Atticus does not require feedback to air his grievances, a silent audience is more than enough.

“You don’t have a bunch of obnoxious relatives who took all the good things and left you with fucking earth magic, or trying to make springs appear in the middle of a cursed desert, and have that be your signature move as a ruler. Oh yeah, look at me be the youngest Prince in recorded history, making them all bow to my will with my abilities to brew cough medicines and possibly one day make pebbles shake!” The dog looks suitably unimpressed. “Exactly. You get it, even though you’re a dog with no care in the world.”

He sighs, from the depths of his soul, and tries to skip to the next spell in the book, still geomancy but hopefully less obtuse. Alright, this one is supposed to help detect precious metals in the ground, sweet. Possible uses firmly established. Invocation: easy, just one of the five or so standard ones, after a while you recognize it at a glance. Command: Metal, earth, detection, all in there. Little bit of a telepathic bent, which isn’t his favourite but he’ll live. The restriction is a bit long-winded, there has got to be a more elegant way to encompass all the things you don’t want showing up and all the places you don’t want to be searching and all the times you don’t want any precious metal in your vicinity to start lighting up your brain, but fine, if this is the tried and tested version, better safe than so—

Something nudges his leg, and when he looks to the side the dog has snuck up to him and is nosing at his side, like it’s looking for something. Oh, right.

“Ham sandwich, huh?” He reaches inside his robe— on any other man, it would be a dressing gown, but Atticus subscribes to the belief that by virtue of being a wizard, any coat-like garment he wears automatically becomes a wizard’s robe and therefore entirely appropriate to be seen in; also this one has a lot more pockets than any dressing gown could ever hope to attain— to get what was supposed to be a meal tiding him over from lunch until his usual late dinner. The dog immediately starts wagging its tail, dancing in place.

“I suppose I’m not very hungry, it’s too warm for that.” He takes the ham out of the sandwich and offers it, then lets go just in time for the dog to rip it out of his grip and wolf it down in two bites. It looks back up, expectantly. “Sorry, buddy, that was it. Unless you want the bread too?” The dog evidently does. “Alright, no need to rush, I won’t take it away from you. Greedy bastard, yes you are.”

Far from being insulted, the dog crowds in close again, setting its short muzzle on Atticus’ knee and looking up soulfully. “Yes, I know you’re very good and deserving of all the treats, I still don’t have any.” He lifts a hand, approaching slowly so the dog can see, and it allows him to pet its head. “Ah, I see, your affections can be bought. The sweet allure of ham, who can resist.” The dog turns its head for better access behind its folded pig ears, and Atticus is happy to oblige. He has neither the time nor the taste for hunting, but maybe he should get a dog purely for the company. Well. He is still hoping that role will be taken up by a familiar some time soon. Twenty-four years and counting, it really is the eleventh hour.

“But you’re still a very good boy, as far as dogs go. Even if you do look very unfortunate. What sort of an eye colour even is that for a dog, let me see? Green? Really? Are you secretly half cat?”

——

The dog returns the next time Atticus takes his academic frustrations to the backyard, and this time it traipses over uncalled, short nails clicking on the stones.

"Oh hey, look who's back, it's my study buddy!" He lays aside the piece of paper with his nearly-finished spell plan for metal detection, "and here I thought I was doomed to actually get any work done today."

Despite this accusation, the dog is actually a very good work companion. Once the excited greetings are dispensed with and Atticus has paid the obligatory ham tax, it settles down in front of the bench to look after passing flies and doze. Lazy summer days affect even dogs, apparently.

"Alright, I think I'm done," Atticus says eventually, surprised himself, "that was a lot less painful than expected. Let me just calculate the energy requirements one last time... Yeah, I think that's all sound. Good. Well." He looks down at the dog, "Are you ready to try this one out?" The dog looks interested, so Atticus takes it as encouragement.

Trying a new spell is always daunting, even after all this time it still takes a conscious effort to push himself over the brink. That's probably a healthy response, seeing as any miscalculation would have him siphoning his entire life force into a magical black hole to die a really stupid death. Well, that's why he always makes sure to check it over at least twice. He takes a deep breath.

Invocation: done.

Command: no mumbling, no stumbling, good.

Restriction, always the part where he gets most paranoid about not missing any syllables: done.

Short moment of distraction once his mind unclenches from focusing too closely, reigning back his senses, no stopping now: Charge.

There's the fear, standing on the edge of the abyss looking down, but he checked it over, everything will be alright: Activation.

And here's the energy drain, gravity suddenly increasing as his body grows more and more tired by the second, but he checked it, and already the drain is ebbing away, any moment now—

A spear of blinding light shoots up from the ground and cuts clear through his brain, metal singing saw-like in his ears, his skull vibrating like a cauldron being struck and he screams, hands over his ears and still there's so much in the ground all across the yard and every molecule is clamoring for his attention and it's too much, too loud, too—

The din fades and Atticus finds himself crumpled on the bench, tears streaming over his face, the dog yapping at him and trying to climb into his lap.

"Shit," he says, with feeling, because that about encompasses the situation. "It's alright, calm down, I'm alright. Just stupid. Calm— will you stop if I pick you up?" The dog is far too big for a lap dog, squirming and trying to lick his face, but once Atticus has both arms around it it sits still, letting him rest his chin on its back. "See? All good. I forgot there's amulets and trinkets buried all over the grounds, so of course it's full of metal." The shock is wearing off, and he can tell he's going to have a headache for the rest of the day. "God, I hate telepathy."

——

And since Atticus really is stupid, it takes him another three days, until one day he’s passing by the creepy collection of taxidermy familiars going back ten generations of Della Scala wizards, to spot the obvious.

Why the hell did a dog he'd never seen before turn up in the palace backyard, and why did the spell planning go so much quicker than expected? And there he was, whingeing about his familiar being late in turning up!

The only trouble is, familiars are supposed to reveal themselves right away, and the dog hasn't said a word so far.

——

"I'm so sorry I called you ugly," Atticus says to the dog, "that was hurtful and rude. You're not, obviously."

The dog wags its tail and doesn't say anything.

"Again, I'm so sorry. I can bring you ham every day if you want, or whatever else you want, please, just please forgive me."

The dog puts its head on his knee to sniff at his hands. It doesn't look particularly insulted, or vindictive. Atticus hesitantly starts petting it.

"...You're not really my familiar, are you." The dog closes its eyes in bliss as he scratches behind its ears, and doesn't say a single word. "No, you're just a dog who wandered in from the street." He lets out a breath, and wonders why he feels so disappointed. "Well, I guess I'd look kind of odd with a mongrel familiar, wouldn't I. Especially in a town half run by wolves. For what it's worth though, buddy, I'm sure you'd be doing your very best." The dog manages to climb onto the bench next to him, and settles in for a nap, still at optimal petting distance.

Atticus sighs. "Sometimes I wonder if the future I'm working towards will ever show up. Maybe I won't find my field of magic, and I won't ever get a familiar, and one day the whole town will realize I'm not a real wizard and that if they want to tear each other to shreds in the streets, there's nothing I can do." He looks at the dog, who is looking back with lively green eyes from where its snout rests on its artfully crossed front legs. He strokes its big ugly head, and feels a little better.

"You know what, buddy? I think we've done enough geomancy to tell it really isn't going to be my thing. Let's go back to alchemy for another round, maybe there's some advanced part I didn't get to last time that will make it all click."


	2. Wolf

The worst part about traditional wizarding getup is that it's not made for summer. For some reason, all wizards pretend to be living in permanently chilly climes, or at least that's what they dress for. They also all dress like octogenarians, which, granted, in many cases is actually appropriate, just not for Atticus. It sucks because while he can hang around his palace in any old house coat he fancies, when it comes to paying his monthly visit to the Capulet and Montague house, respectively, there is no way he can avoid dressing his part if he doesn't want to come across as disrespectful.

So, he is currently walking through the blistering afternoon sun wearing the appropriate woolen cape (gray) with embroidered occult symbols underneath his chain of office, hating every second of it, but what can you do? It's been handed down for generations, altered and taken in and let out and mended whenever needed; he has no idea if any of his predecessors actually died in it, but it sure smells like someone did. It repels magic though, including cleaning spells, so that's... useful. He's not wearing the matching woolen tunic (gray) underneath it, just a shirt over his leggins, because there's honouring tradition and there's plain suicide. He's also ditched the huge wide-brimmed hat (gray) with the diadem nestled on its crown, and is instead wearing the diadem directly on his head, like intended by its maker. The slippers (guess) are actually quite comfortable, and he suspects they were added to the tradition by a similar trick as the one that turns dressing gowns into wizarding robes, by some progenitor too old and frail to bother wearing heeled pointy boots, or whatever the fashion of his time was. There's absolutely no need to carry a huge staff around except for showing off, and while Atticus needs all the additional gravitas traditional vestment can afford him, he's pretty sure logging around a big useless stick will not be much help in that department. He could learn to use it as a wand, but it seems quite cumbersome a tool when any half-way pointy object will do. As it happens, Atticus first started practicing spells with an ivory letter opener he'd nicked off his grandfather's desk, a long time ago, and he's never since seen the need to switch to anything else. It fits into the cape's interior pockets, too. Paris on the other hand uses a bejewelled stiletto knife and thinks it's the most stylish thing ever, so, to each their own. Oh, and Atticus also isn't doing the whole long bushy beard thing. He's twenty-four. For one thing growing a beard that full might pose some difficulties still, but mostly he quite likes the lower half of his face, and doesn’t see why he should have to hide it from the world.

They turn a corner and step in front of the Montague mansion; there’s two wolves guarding the front gate. Atticus always forgets how big they are until he meets them face-to-snout again, apex predators the size of a cow. He’s never seen a real wolf, one that doesn’t spend half its life as a human that is, but surely they cannot be that big, and their eyes probably don’t have that glint of shrewd intelligence in them either. It’s a good thing most of his guard have served longer than Atticus has been Prince, so their stoic calm as they pass through the gate uninhibited helps keep them all from running off like headless chickens, Atticus very much included. Maybe his guard of ten silver-speared soldiers could buy him time to escape if they were up against the two gatekeepers only, but there is no way they could stand a chance against the entire clan. They come in peace, obviously, and the Montagues know very well that if they laid a fi— a fang on him, the Capulets would have words about it (well, hopefully they know), but still there is no way Atticus would be caught dead here after nightfall or any day close to the full moon. All of this is new— monthly meetings with each house are a thing his grandfather came up with, after earlier attempts to get both sides to sit at a table together had failed disastrously. Atticus is the first Prince to actually go visit each house, instead of having them see him at the palace, and for all that he tries to see it as a peace mission, it kinda does make it seem like he’s the first Prince weak enough to have to put himself at the mercy of his supposed subjects at regular intervals. Cheery thought.

Up the winding path towards the mansion, past trees and bushes, and all over the gardens there’s wolves, huge wolves sitting, lying, idly trotting about, silently watching them go by. Then there’s distinctly bipedal steps approaching from around a bend in the path, and a young blond Montague Atticus remembers seeing with Mercutio’s crowd of street marauders comes around a bush to meet them.

“Oh hey, it’s you!” he says, which is definitely not the time-honoured traditional way of greeting one’s Prince, but comes as such a surprise Atticus doesn’t quite know how to react.

He settles on a cool “Indeed,” allowing for the fact that maybe this guy forgot his manners in a fit of nerves, although he doesn’t look particularly nervous. He’s actually giving Atticus a very unsubtle once-over, and if the next thing he says is any kind of challenge to his authority then they really have a problem.

“You’re addressing His Grace, the Prince,” one of his guards helpfully supplies, like maybe the whole wizarding getup/chain of office/armed guards thing wasn’t enough of a tipoff, but it’s a hint Atticus can’t very well give himself without looking like exactly the sort of guy who has to tell people who he is for them to take him seriously, which is to say, a total nobody.

“Oh! Right!” the guy says, like it just slipped his mind or something, and he does a passable attempt at a bow, “welcome, Your Grace, come on in!” Atticus could swear he can sense his guard relaxing their grip on their spear, to a man. They keep moving.

“I’m Benvolio, by the way,” Mr Diplomat of the Year is saying, and oh, right, the adopted one. Atticus hadn’t known which face belongs to the name until now. “The bo— Her Ladyship wants me to sit in on the meeting, as a human ambassador of sorts, ‘cause, you know, I lived with humans for seven years, before she took me in. So I can help with— “ he waves a hand to presumably indicate complicated interpersonal matters— “misunderstandings, things like that.”

Atticus gives a regal nod, because he can’t think of anything to say that isn’t sarcasm. Who knows, maybe Benvolio is really great at preventing potentially catastrophic political misunderstandings when he isn’t the person doing the talking for either side. Atticus wonders if Benvolio is currently human-shaped out of courtesy, or because he actually is human. He always assumed that being adopted by the Montagues included being turned, but he can’t remember anyone ever outright saying that.

The inside of the mansion is gloriously cool, although Atticus’ relief is somewhat spoiled by Lady Montague standing in the entrance hall to welcome them. She’s human-shaped too, but in her case it does not make her any less terrifying than the entire pack of wolves added together.

“This visit honours our house, Your Grace,” she says, and if she were human, protocol would insist she kiss his hand, but Atticus has long since learned that Lady Montague makes her own rules of conduct, and in this case they include a very firm handshake. Fair enough, Atticus supposes, after all he has no idea what the appropriate werewolf greeting would be. His ancestors never bothered writing down unimportant information like that, not when there were over fifty ways to kill a werewolf to document.

“I tried to tell her not to,” Benvolio mumbles next to his ear as they follow her into the dining room, and he has no business walking this close but he’s doing it with such confidence not even Atticus can bring himself to object, ”but she just stared me down until I changed the subject.”

The door they pass through does not have a handle or a lock on it, and all the furniture inside the dining room is low enough for a very big wolf to access. Strangely enough, it makes almost no difference to the height of the chairs and tables.

“Your Grace has met Benvolio,” Lady Montague says, sat at the head of the table, ”but today my son Romeo will also sit in at our meeting, if Your Grace has no objections.” She’s not saying it like she expects any. “He needs to learn the ropes of politics if he’s ever going to lead this pack.”

Right on cue, a lanky young wolf trots into the room with disaffected ennui and plops down at the table, right next to the chair set out for it. It gives Atticus a look that very clearly reads as “I have no desire to be here either, so you better not say anything”.

“Romeo!” Lady Montague snaps, “Shape!”

The wolf rolls its eyes (head turned towards Benvolio so Lady Montague can’t see), and then there’s a horrific sound like multiple joints popping and cracking, as its skin seems to liquify, fur vanishing, and before Atticus has quite registered he’s seeing a werewolf transformation for the first time in his life, the lanky young wolf has been replaced by a lanky boy in his late teens, wild-haired and stark naked.

“Hello, Mother,” he says breezily, and sits down, on the chair this time. “Your Grace.” Atticus has to hand it to him, defying a mother like that takes guts. Benvolio looks like he’s trying very hard not to grin, and possibly forgetting to breathe in the process.

Lady Montague hits the table with an open palm. “You put on some clothes this instant, and stop humiliating me in front of our guest!”

Romeo bows his head, then turns to one of the wolves advancing from a corner to ask for his clothes.

There’s lunch going on after that, served by wolves even though Atticus is pretty sure the cooking must have required opposable thumbs. Lady Montague is keeping him on his toes discussing poaching laws and grain prices, and he’s way too busy hiding his terror to pay attention to what the youngster contingent is getting up to. The leftovers are taken away, and it looks like the meeting is drawing to a close, when Her Ladyship suddenly glares past him in renewed ire.

“Romeo! Benvolio!”

Romeo is slumped over the table with his head on his folded arms, looking honestly perplexed by the reprimand, as does Benvolio, who stops petting his hair but only takes his hand away after a few seconds of confused silence.

Ah yes, human ambassador. This meeting definitely went so much less awkward than the last one. Still, nothing will ever top Lady Capulet making hungry eyes at Atticus directly in front of her husband, while her nephew was staring on with a white-knuckle grip on his knife, so there’s at least that.

——

“You should come into town and hang out some time, Your Grace,” Benvolio is saying. He insisted on walking them all the way to the front gate, acting like him and Atticus were having a casual stroll by themselves, making overly-familiar small talk. Atticus is trying very hard to remain unimpressed, but Benvolio is weirdly difficult to dislike, his familiarity somehow coming across as genuine rather than disrespectful. It’s been a very long time since Atticus has been on familiar terms with anyone his age. Still, a pie-in-the-sky proposal remains just that, charming proponent or no.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” he says, imagining the look on Mercutio’s face if he turned up with his full guard to do whatever it is the youth these days does for fun. It’s hard to remember Mercutio is only two years younger than him.

They step in front of the gate, and there’s a waxing half moon in the sky. Full moons are off-limits for both houses, the Montague house shuts down and withdraws into itself during the new moon, and there is no way Atticus could bring himself to do two visits in close succession— besides, there’d be more squabbling over who gets to be visited first— so the waxing half moon is for the Montagues, the waning one for the Capulets.

Benvolio shrugs. “If you say so. But if you ever change your mind, you know.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” They’re back in full sunlight and Atticus is eager to go home and finally put this chore behind him. Benvolio, in a sleeveless jerkin and shirt, seems to be putting up with the heat with much more ease. “Until we meet next—“

“I’ll come visit, don’t worry.” Atticus cannot be dealing with this right now.

“Sure,” he says, even though the last thing he needs is Benvolio sauntering in during his open court, when he deals with all the complaints, disputes, and other appeals of the week in three noisy, overcrowded hours. “Goodbye.”


	3. Magic

“What the hell are you doing here?!” Atticus jumped up so fast his book has fallen to the ground.

Benvolio is standing by the back yard wall, on the secret path to the gardens nobody is supposed to know about, looking like Atticus is the one being unreasonable. “Visiting? I was passing by and smelled you were here, so I thought I’d drop by. Hi.”

“How did you get in?” There’s nobody else around, nobody really knows Atticus likes to study out here, so nobody is going to check on him to see if a werewolf burglar has come to kill him.

Benvolio doesn’t look like a would-be burglar-murderer though. He just looks baffled. “Through the fence.”

“You broke the fence?!”

“No! I can just...wiggle through, when I change. I’m small.” He is definitely not small as a human, so Atticus finds that hard to believe.

“Show me.”

“I can show you later. Can I hang out for a little?”

This is where Atticus is supposed to say _Hell no_ and call for his guard, isn’t it. Instead he hears himself say: “Yeah, fine.” He has no idea why. Nobody has come just to visit him, to see him, since he doesn’t even remember how long. Maybe he’s just curious to find out what Benvolio wants. He picks up his book and sits back on the bench.

“What’re you reading?” Benvolio plops down next to him, right next to him, and Atticus scoots a little to the side. Personal space does not appear to be Benvolio’s strong suit.

“It’s a book on magic.”

“Is it the kind of magic Mercutio does, with fire?”

“No,” Atticus says, a little more surly than intended, “why would I need to learn that when Mercutio is already doing it.” He immediately regrets saying something so undignified, but Benvolio nods.

“Yeah, I get that. That’s like when I decided I was going to get into poetry, and then I found out Romeo had been doing that for four years already, so I had to find my own thing.”

“Have you found your thing?” He has no idea what kind of a thing Benvolio would be into, besides chatting at random strangers.

“Not really. I like dancing, but, well, nobody can ever be as good at that as Mercutio.”

“He has that effect.” Atticus turns back to his book. He’d almost finished a really interesting paragraph when Benvolio suddenly showed up and startled the living daylights out of him.

“Ham sandwich?”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I meant: Are you going to eat that ham sandwich?”

Atticus blinks, then reaches inside his robe. “This one?” He’s been hoping for his four-legged friend to show up all afternoon, but so far no dice.

“I’m just saying, it smells really good…” Benvolio makes what he probably thinks is a bashful expression, very unconvincingly.

“Yeah, alright. I was saving it for… someone else, but… nevermind, you can have it.”

“Thank you!” Benvolio is inhaling the sandwich like a starving man, so Atticus returns to his book in order to avoid the sight. Right, Alchemy.

“Hey, Your Grace?” That just sounds… wrong. Benvolio is probably about the same age as him, and they’re sitting on a bench together and Atticus just gave him his food and oh, what the hell.

“Atticus. Call me Atticus, it’s just the two of us and I’m not… on the job right now anyway.” Here’s hoping he won’t regret giving that permission. There’s plenty of ministers and secretaries and servants who’ve known him since he was a boy, but since he became Prince and Mercutio isn’t ever around anymore, nobody calls him Atticus except letters from relatives enquiring about his magical progress. It feels right, but Atticus has never set much store by his feelings before, not when his brain is telling him the opposite.

Benvolio doesn’t miss a beat. “Hey, Atticus, what are all these papers about?”

“Those are spell plans. I need them for casting spells, to tell me what to do.”

“Weird, Mercutio never uses these.”

_Ugh._ “That’s because Mercutio knows all his spells by heart.” _All five of them_, the spiteful part of him wants to add, but Benvolio is friends with Mercutio and besides, choosing five complementary spells and mastering them completely sure isn’t something Atticus has ever managed to do.

“Do you know any spells by heart?”

“No. I don’t have time for that, I need to study more spells.”

“Why?” Nobody has ever asked that before. Atticus has been fighting this campaign all by himself, and suddenly he’s not sure how to explain why.

“So I can find... my thing, and if I don’t find it at least I will know about many different kinds of magic, and know which to use for what kind of problem.” Said out loud, it sounds pretty pathetic, but this has been his life nonstop for the past year; before that as well, just less frantic.

“Huh, makes sense. You can know a few spells really well or a lot of them just a little.”

“Exactly.” Jack of all trades, master of none.

“So what kinds of magic have you studied?”

“Basically all of them.” _Brag more, why don’t you._ It’s the truth though. “Well, I skipped over the really evil stuff, like raising the dead, leeching people’s life force—”

“Oh, like what the Capulets do.”

“That’s not— they do that to survive. That’s not evil, it’s in their nature.”

“Uh-huh. Did you skip anything else?”

“I don’t like Divination, or Telepathy.”

“That first one’s about predicting the future, right? That sounds super useful!”

“It is, if you can do it. But it takes talent, and years and years of studying different aspects of time and reality, and by the time you’ve come far enough to make sound predictions, I think you’ve… lost sight of what’s important. You don’t live in the same world as normal people anymore, you’re so wrapped up in the past and the future you forget about the present.” This is almost verbatim what he told Valentine the last time they spoke.

_Did you know,_ Valentine replied, in that annoyingly smug way pretending to be casual that Mercutio has also perfected, _that technically, the present doesn’t even exist?_

And Atticus asked _Well, what do you call this conversation we’re having right now then?_

_Distracting_, Valentine said, and Atticus maybe lost his temper a little bit at that point, and he hasn’t seen or spoken to Valentine since. Most of the time, he tries to forget Valentine even lives at the palace.

“What’s that other thing you skipped,” Benvolio asks, “the tele-something?”

“Telepathy.” Atticus needs to remember he’s talking to a guy who hasn’t heard these terms thrown around since before he could talk. “It’s when you talk to people in their minds, or hear their thoughts, or feel their feelings, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, that’s a werewolf thing too!”

This is complete news to Atticus. “You can talk to each other telepathically?”

“No, not talk with words, but you can… feel the others, you know? Well _you_ can’t, but we do. Like I know right now Romeo is—“ he points to his left— “in that direction, and he’s awake and not sick, and his heartbeat isn’t doing anything crazy so he’s probably sitting down somewhere, and there’s some others of the pack with him.”

“Do you know where exactly he is?”

“No, and he’s too far away for me to know exactly how far. It’s more precise for close distances.”

“How far does it reach? The telepathy, I mean.”

“For most people, about as far as from one end of the town to the other. That’s probably not a coincidence, I don’t think. Mine’s a bit more limited, because, well, I’m adopted.”

This is possibly going to be an insensitive question, but Atticus is burning to know: “Did you have to… learn about being a werewolf?”

“Oh yeah, you have no idea! Changing shapes is _hard_, and holding your shape without accidentally changing all the time is, too! It took me ages to get the hang of it. I’m still improving on the brain stuff.”

“The telepathy?”

“That, and… look, it’s like, when you’re born a werewolf, your brain is basically half human and half wolf, no matter what your shape is. You’re always yourself. For me, it’s easy to get lost in one shape or the other, brainwise. Not like I forget to change back, just that changing is like flicking a switch and suddenly the whole world is different and you’re a different... being, and it’s super confusing.”

“That’s fascinating.” Atticus notices he’s still holding his book, and for a moment he wonders why the hell he thought Alchemy was more interesting than talking to Benvolio. “I cannot believe my ancestors have been writing all their knowledge down in books for hundreds of years, and none of them ever discovered that.” They probably weren’t asking.

Benvolio shrugs. “Yeah, well, let me tell you, werewolves don’t know too much about humans either, except how to eat them.”

“Can I ask, why did Lady Montague adopt you?”

“Oh, she doesn’t kill puppies and children, and I guess when Romeo found me I was too cute a stray to abandon.” He sounds a little too casual about it, so Atticus makes a mental note to change the topic. “Maybe she thought she could use someone to tell her about human stuff,” Benvolio adds, “I don’t know.”

——

“I came in over there, you see?” Benvolio points. “Beside the tree.”

Atticus doesn’t see how that bit of fence looks any different than all the other bits of fence. “Do you think any other werewolves could get through that way?”

Benvolio takes off his jerkin. “Nah. As I said, I’m small.” He folds it up and puts it in a drawstring bag he’s produced from somewhere while Atticus wasn’t looking. “You’ll see in a minute.” He takes off his shirt.

“...What are you doing?”

“I need to take all this off before changing, so I can take it with me!”

“Wait, all of it?” Benvolio makes a _duh_ kind of face, and he seems completely unashamed but Atticus is not a werewolf and not used to seeing people casually disrobe in front of him. “Right, I think I’ll be going now, see you around. You know how to get in.” He turns to go. He can inspect the fence by himself later, if at all.

“See you!”

“Oh, and Benvolio?” Atticus says without looking back, “don’t tell humans you can smell them, it’s rude.”

“What? No no, I didn’t mean it in the bad way, only that I can smell you the way I can see you!”

“Still rude. Goodbye.”


	4. Spell

Atticus is in a hurry. His lunch ran late, accidentally on purpose, so now he should already be reading boring reports in his Official Business study, the one where ministers and secretaries can come see him during the day. Atticus is striding across the palace, perhaps not as fast as he could, hoping he won’t fall asleep over his reports—

_The door on your left._

He freezes. There should definitely not be a voice in his head, not after all the precautions he took.

_Valentine?_ he tries saying back, although he’s never gotten the hang of this, _I told you to stay out of my brain!_

No reply. Atticus has half a mind to stomp over to Valentine’s rooms and bang on his door until either the cryptid himself opens or the door breaks. No time though, and also he really doesn’t want to know what Valentine gets up to in there these days. What was it he said again?

Atticus looks to his left, at what he thinks is solid stone wall. Instead there’s a door though, a weird little closed door that has no business being there, as could perhaps be expected of an old-as-balls palace built by generations of half-mad wizards with too much time on their hands. Should he try and open it? He really hates that Valentine’s approach to divination involves never actually telling people their future in advance, which to Atticus would be the only useful way of going about it. Will opening the door do something good or bad? He knows better than to try asking again.

Oh, what the hell, if he doesn’t do this, he'll be spending the rest of the afternoon wondering what he missed. He tries to push the door open— and draws his hand back with a cry at a sudden piercing pain. There’s blood welling up near the tip of his index finger, and closer inspection of the door reveals a rusty bit of metal, like a very fine nail, sticking out of the wood. Shit. This is why Atticus doesn’t mess with divination, and only bothered to learn enough telepathy to put a protective wall around his mind. Not that it seems to have been a very good wall. Fucking Valentine. Dying of sepsis is not in his plans for the near future, so he should go disinfect that— actually, wasn’t there a spell for it he learned during his stint at studying biomancy?

Atticus sticks the throbbing finger into his mouth so his clothes won’t get dirty, does a 180 degree turn and hurries to his other study, the one that has all his magic notes. He has private rooms other than that, of course, but this is the one room in the palace that feels like his, not his grandfather’s, not some other ancestor’s. There’s a large desk perennially overflowing with books and notes and scrap paper because Atticus is bad at putting things away when he might still need them, there’s a bed by the far wall for whenever he forgets the time over his studies and can’t be arsed to wander across the palace to his bedroom, and there’s the terrarium with his frogs. His biomancy notes should be up on the bookshelf, in a green folder… there they are. Leafing through them with his non-dominant hand is a bother, but the spell plan for disinfection is fairly high up.

He remembers how long it took to figure out, and looking it over again is surprised at how short the plan is. Concise, elegant construction, but wrapping his head around the many variables and just how they interacted with each other was a pain in the neck. No wonder he gave up fairly quickly after that. Alright, this should not take much energy.

Invocation (one of the very old ones, this must have been an early spell his ancestors invented, even if they probably had no idea what caused inflammations back then). Command. Restriction (very concise, the generations improving on it have worn the spell down to its bare necessities, like a smooth stone). Charge (he can’t wait to have a familiar take over that one). Activation.

The smallest of energy drains, and no visible change; but with a spell this good it has to have worked, or else it would have been ditched generations ago. The wound is on his dominant hand and a finger he needs for writing though, so he should probably close that up. The spell plan for healing is a good chunk further back, but he helpfully underscored the title back then. Alright.

Invocation (the same one as the disinfectant). Command (strangely similar in form, too). Restriction (did someone base the disinfectant spell on this one? The style is basically the same, and this one is a spell that can conceivably be that old). Charge (alright, mustn’t let his focus slip). Activation.

A little more energy drained this time, but the wound immediately closes up, with barely a scar. Atticus puts the two spell plans next to each other. Very similar indeed, strange that he never noticed it before. What if he… put them on top of each other, so the identical parts would overlap… and then the parts peculiar to each spell could be slotted around that, and then the two could be combined into one? Disinfect and heal with one stroke, and it wouldn’t really matter if both happened at the same time rather than in sequence, would it? The general thrust of them goes in the same direction, and the parts that don’t overlap don’t seem to counteract each other. He reaches for a pencil, turns the piece of paper with the healing plan around and starts scribbling on the back, middle part first as that’s the difficult one. Yeah, it all comes together. He adds the Invocation and Charge and scans it over with a critical eye. Seems to all be in order. How come nobody thought of doing that before?

The bell of the palace chapel strikes the half hour, and Atticus winces. He should definitely be in his other study by now, dammit. He puts the pencil down. Time to get going.

——

“So, you don’t actually need a familiar to do magic?” Benvolio is back, and they’re friends now. Neither of them has said anything to that effect, but Atticus knows it anyway.

He gave Benvolio the ham sandwich he brought for him specifically this time, and laughed at Benvolio’s over-the-top display of gratefulness (“It’s not like I can’t get my own, the boss doesn’t starve me or a— You didn’t hear that, I meant Her Ladyship. Anyway I just forget to bring something, and then suddenly I’m at the opposite side of town and could really use a snack, you know how it goes…”). And somewhere along the lines Atticus realized that goofing around with Benvolio is enough. He’s not expected to be brilliant, or suave, or larger than life. He can just be himself, and Benvolio will still keep coming back. Atticus has not quite stopped reeling from that realization.

“No, but having one makes it easier. Twice as much energy to spend, two brains instead of one, and unlike people, they can never tell your secrets to anyone.”

Benvolio is sitting on the stone floor of the yard, back against and elbows on the bench Atticus is sitting on. “What do you think your familiar will be?” The sunlight filtered through the linden tree is dappling his skin.

“No idea. It can be any kind of animal.” Atticus has never befriended anyone so fast since the age of about ten. He's not the type to make friends, at all, but especially not fast. It feels right, but he has no idea why.

“Well what would you like it to be?” Maybe because Benvolio asks questions like he cares about the answer.

“A frog.”

“A frog? Not even a big toad?”

“I like frogs. I keep some in my study, my grandfather showed me how to care for them.” Maybe because he feels he can tell Benvolio things Mercutio used to make fun of, and trust Benvolio will do no such thing.

“Huh. Do they do anything, like, are they good for anything?”

“They keep me company.” Maybe because he craves the company of someone his own age.

“Fair enough. Hey, if your familiar never shows up you could always just fake one.”

“What?”

“I mean, they look like regular animals, right? And Mercutio talks to his but nobody but him can hear the reply, so he might just as well be talking to a regular weasel. You could just go around talking to a frog, and if it dies you replace it with another frog and nobody will know.”

“That’s… actually a really good plan, except you already know about it, so if I wanted to do that I’d have to kill you first.”

“Nah, I can keep a secret. Besides, I’m too cute to kill.” Or maybe, just maybe, the fact that Benvolio has a dimpled smile and shapely arms and wears clothes like they’re an afterthought might have something to do with it.

“You think so?”

“Evidently, as nobody has managed to kill me yet.”

“Fair enough,” Atticus says, hoping it will come out sounding neutral, or mildly amused. “Maybe that can be your special thing. Benvolio the Cute and his reign of unopposed terror over all who would harm him.”

“We’ll make a great team. If anyone questions your frog, I’ll make sure to bat my eyes at them until they can’t stand it any longer.” He tilts his head back and flutters his eyelashes up at Atticus, and Atticus has to laugh and sit on his hands to keep from reaching out and— he doesn’t even know, ruffle Benvolio’s hair or touch his face or something even weirder.

“Alright, I need to focus on this text now, can you entertain yourself for a bit?”

“No problem.” Head still tilted back towards the green canopy, Benvolio closes his eyes, perhaps to doze. Atticus has to tell himself firmly to look down at his damn book already.

Once he manages to herd his brain back towards the pages, it’s quite absorbing a read. He reads, and nods, and flips through the annotations to confirm his conclusions, and reads on. There’s diagrams in the book, more diagrams explaining them in the annotations, and he ends up drawing some of his own in his notes. The principle holds fast either way, and it’s a nice change to be able to understand what is being said and why it’s important. He’s read three pages, now five, and then the chapter is done and he’s staring at a space between himself and the page, mind working over the new information.

“Woah, I can’t read that at all.” Benvolio has climbed onto the bench and is looking over his shoulder. “What language is it?”

“Not a language, a code. Every sign stands for a syllable, and some for elements or certain instructions.”

“And you can read that, just like that?”

“My grandfather taught me when I was little; he made me read a chapter from one of his books every week.”

Benvolio settles down more comfortably. “What’s this book about?”

“Alchemy.”

“And what does Alchemy do?”  


“Many things. It’s mostly about transforming things into other things, other elements I mean. But also how to set up a spell, how to calculate the energy you need, how to make sure it’s safe, that kind of stuff. That’s why it’s the first branch of magic I ever studied, to learn the basics.”

“And now you’re studying it again?” Benvolio is resting his head on Atticus’ shoulder now, a casual intimacy like they’ve known each other for years. Atticus suddenly remembers Mercutio used to do this with Valentine when pestering him for a story way past his bedtime, too tired to keep his own head up but too stubborn to admit defeat and go to sleep. They often had to carry him to his bed afterwards, and Atticus remembers envying the two of them to no end. Back then he still believed having a brother meant always having someone else around, someone who knows you and still never leaves. He knows better now. Everyone can leave.

“I never really made it past the basics, I was so impatient to get to all the other branches.” It’s nice, having Benvolio be this close, even though they’re not touching anywhere besides his shoulder. It’s a little like being a child again, when crying and laughing and running and hugging was all much easier. “Now I’m through with those, so I’m getting into the advanced stuff.” If he keeps talking, hopefully Benvolio will stay where he is. ”This is a spell of plenty, it can increase the amount of any kind of matter.”

“Oh, now that’s useful!”

“Right?”

“You could make enough food to last a whole winter!”

Atticus has a short moment of epiphany and dread, grain prices and stock values and tax rates running before his eyes. “...Yes, you could. Actually. Uh, for some reason my ancestors seemed most concerned with making and then multiplying gold.” Why do wizards always seem to miss the obvious?

“I mean you can use gold to buy food, but it seems more practical to cut out the extra step, you know?”

“Yeah.” God, he needs someone like Benvolio to write annotations to all these dusty cerebral rambling tomes. He would find the most practical and innovative use for every single spell, no doubt about it. “It’s a fiendishly difficult spell though, and you have to completely rewrite it whenever you want to increase a different material. Gold takes so much energy to multiply you’d end up killing yourself before you got truly rich. I’m working on water for now, that’s just two elements and they’re both fairly common and low-energy...”

——

“You really should come down to town and meet the others though.” Benvolio is back to sitting on the ground, arms folded behind his head as he leans against the bench and blinks sleepily up at Atticus. “They’re fun, I promise.”

“Can’t. I’m the Prince, remember? I would need guards, and there would be protocol.”

“Come as Atticus then.” His eyes slip closed, but he keeps talking. “He seems like a much cooler guy anyway.” It’s a good thing he can’t see the face Atticus is probably making right now, like a blushing schoolboy.

“I can’t, the Capulets would throw a fit if I was seen fraternizing with Montagues. I can’t show favor to any side over the other, I need to be impartial in their disputes or they won’t accept my judgement.”

Benvolio’s eyes open in alarm. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“Poor you, that means you have to hang out in this backyard with a Capulet now too, for the sake of fairness.” He has light eyes, Atticus notices, grey or green or hazel, and full of mischief. “I nominate Peter, he’s not the brightest but pretty alright for a vampire.”

“I only have to hang out alone with Peter if you tell on me, so my tender neck is in your hands.”

Something about Benvolio’s smile looks like he knows how badly Atticus wants to touch him right now. “Don’t worry. As I said, I can keep a secret.”

——

As nice as it is having Benvolio come and visit regularly, Atticus does worry about his furry study buddy, who seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. He tells himself that maybe the dog was someone’s pet after all, despite the lack of a collar, and that its owner put an end to its exploits by fixing the garden gate or something. He really hopes that’s what happened, not any of the awful fates his imagination can conjure up for a smallish mutt in a town full of big wolves.

The moon waxes on, and in the days before the full moon Atticus’ guard is extra busy dissolving fights between Montagues and Capulets on open streets. The whole town is on edge, waiting for the inevitable night where every human will have to close their window shutters, lock their doors, and not set foot outside after moonrise come hell or high water. In a way, it’s business as usual, although there are a few brawls involving civilians, which is to say people who are neither undead nor blessed with blood that’s inedible to vampires and superhuman regeneration to go with it. Atticus comes down like a ton of bricks on those misdemeanors, or tries to, even though there’s a fascinating supernatural effect at play where “some Capulets” or “some Montagues” turns into “could have been any of them, nobody specifically because all named people somehow have alibis, therefore it was none of them actually”, and Atticus is seriously considering implementing kin liability and just making Lord Capulet and Lady Montague pay all the fines for their respective houses. He’s certain that way the culprits will suddenly be found very quickly.

It’s the early evening of the full moon when Atticus looks up from his nearly-finished spell plan for increasing water, and the sudden silence outside tells him it has begun. As if on cue, all Montagues anywhere within town limits will have stopped in their tracks, then turned to get to the Montague mansion as fast as possible, and woe to anyone stupid enough to stand in their way. Of course they all have a telepathic link, somehow Atticus has been missing the obvious all this time.

He gets up and leaves his study in favour of looking out the large upper-story window from one of the meeting halls, with a view of the town from the palace hill. Every house and street lies frozen in ghostly silence, and he can see his guard walking up the hill, their job done for the day. A minute passes, then another, and then the earth starts to tremble very faintly, a dust cloud rising from the direction of the Montague mansion. The cloud draws closer, and there they are, the full pack, running in their wolf shapes across town like the wild hunt, towards the palace hill on their way to the city gates. They will spend the next few days on open country, leaving the town to the Capulets for a little while. As the pack passes directly by the palace, Atticus steps closer to the window and squints, because he thinks he saw— yeah, there it is, a small yellow shape amidst the mass of huge grey bodies, running on the outside edge of the pack so as not to get trampled. Atticus smiles. Poor thing has to run twice as fast to keep up with all the long legs around it, but seems to be doing just fine. Well, it appears his little buddy has found some powerful friends, and Atticus will not have to worry about its safety.


	5. Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: the tags above for "Major Character Injury", "Blood", and "Animal Abuse" refer to this chapter.

Five days after the full moon, things are supposed to be back to normal, or as normal as things ever get in a cursed town full of lunatics. Instead, as the day’s humid heat is just beginning to compress itself into the makings of a fine summer thunderstorm, news gets to the palace that there’s a big fight going on right on the main town square, and no way to tell if and how many humans might be involved.

“Shit,” Atticus says, and it’s as much a comment on the news as it is on the fact that he will not get to spend the afternoon reading Alchemy in his study after all. He gets up from his desk and orders most of the palace guard to the square immediately, while he is going to follow with his personal guard as soon as he can throw on the blighted traditional vestments that will tell people he’s their damn Prince and they should respect him. He’s almost out the door when his eye gets caught by the green biomancy folder still lying open on his desk, because Atticus is terrible about putting things away after using them. There’s potentially hurt civilians down there, so he swipes up the newly improved healing spell and folds it up to put in the pocket with his wand.

The sky is dark with clouds as they leave the palace, but the rain hasn’t started yet, and lightning only flashes far off in the distance. One narrow alley off from the square and they can hear shouting and many agitated footsteps, combined with the hissing rush of air that accompanies a vampire teleporting, times a dozen. They quicken their pace, the guard’s armour clinking, when Atticus sees movement in the twilight. He turns his head to spot a familiar mop of yellow fur, wrapped in a dirty scrap of cloth and staggering towards them like a drunk heading home. Something’s wrong. There’s a street brawl going on right in front of them though, and for a second Atticus is determined to leave the dog be and focus on the people he needs to keep safe, but then the dog gives a horrible broken cry, and Atticus sees the cloth is a formerly white shirt sodden with blood, and—

“Halt!” he shouts, and walks towards the dog, because who the fuck would hurt an animal to get back at its owners, he doesn’t even have an explanation for the shirt but if he finds out who did this he’s going to—

The dog almost makes it to his outstretched hands. In the second before Atticus can touch it, the poor beast starts shaking on the spot, curling and buckling and warping, and two of his guards are next to him just in time to keep the man in the bloody shirt from falling face first into the dirt. Not just a man, Atticus realizes with a sick lurch in his stomach, it’s Benvolio, pale and shining with sweat, and the blood on his shirt is fresh.

“Are you hurt?” Instead of answering, Benvolio only whimpers, almost inhuman in how raw and terrified it sounds. The blood is all over his side but it takes Atticus a stupid amount of time to notice the deep cut on the inside of his upper arm. “Here, you need to press on it!” he tells the guard next to him, and the other one has already taken off his belt to fashion a tourniquet.

Atticus is so frazzled he almost forgot about the spell, but yes of course— “I think I can close the wound,” he says, “I need to see it, can you hold him like this?” His fingers are sticky with drying blood, the light is dim, and he has to turn the paper with the spell plan on it twice until it’s the right spell and the right side up.

Invocation— and does this spell even work on werewolves? Weredogs? No time to wonder. Command (it’s a good thing this spell is so short). Restriction (oh god there’s so much blood). Charge— does he even have enough energy for a wound this major? He didn’t have time to check the numbers but there’s no way he’s breaking off the spell now— Activation.

As the energy drains out of him, Atticus sees with relief that the wound seems to be closing up, slowly at first, then the skin knits together almost too fast to see. “Done,” he mumbles, the guard takes off the tourniquet and Atticus feels dizzy and like he might throw up. Benvolio is conscious but still doesn’t seem to quite know what’s going on, so the crisis isn’t over yet. He’s breathing fast, and when Atticus feels for a pulse his skin is awfully cool and clammy, heartbeat racing under his fingertips. “Shit shit shit— “

Some guard members join them from the square, and apparently the brawling has been calmed down. Oh, right. That’s still a thing.

“We confiscated this,” the head of guard says, “but nobody owned up to bringing it.”

It’s a silver dagger. The type that can counteract a werewolf’s healing abilities, the type that’s explicitly fucking forbidden to carry within city limits, the type that some Capulet apparently thinks he can get away with using right under Atticus’ nose. Atticus is so mad he has to breathe a few times, just so he can see straight. “Right,” he says, and Benvolio takes that moment to change back into a bedraggled-looking dog, so at least it will be easy to carry him.

“I’ll take him,” Atticus says, peeling off the sodden shirt and nestling the dog against his chest, “I want them to see what they have done.” He stands up. “Let’s go.”

He doesn’t have an exact plan of action yet, but goddammit, someone is going to be very sorry soon.

——

“The wound is healed nicely,” the medic says, “but he has lost a lot of blood. If he was human I’d give him up as a lost cause, but I’ve seen werewolves come back from things no human could take. He might make it, he might not. There’s nothing to do but wait, and get as much water and salty broth into him as possible. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

The medic leaves, too accustomed to death to let the worry of it ruin his sleep, and Atticus is left sitting with the patient. Benvolio changed back into his human shape in the palace’s entrance hall, without regaining consciousness. Now he’s lying in the bed in Atticus’ study, partly because that was close by, partly because it’s far away from the guest wing, where Tybalt Capulet is currently residing behind a guarded door and hastily blocked windows. Nobody wanted to own up to bringing the dagger, much less to the attempted murder, and since none of the Montagues seem to have noticed it happening amidst the chaos of the crowd either, Atticus gave short shrift and had the Capulet captain arrested. He doesn’t believe Tybalt would be stupid enough to bring a silver dagger to a fight, and there’s no reason for him to target Benvolio specifically, but Atticus is sick and tired of letting things slide while the violence escalates, and more than willing to make Tybalt pay for whichever of his men he is protecting. Officially, both Tybalt and Benvolio are hostages, and their well-being depends on both houses behaving themselves until today’s incidents are cleared up.

Not that Atticus could do much to make Benvolio’s situation any worse. He’s looking pale even against the bed linen, almost translucent, sweating and breathing much too fast. If he dies, Lady Montague will want Tybalt’s head in retribution, if she doesn’t decide to blame Atticus for it in the first place. Executing Lady Capulet’s nephew will help nobody and get Atticus nothing except the burning hatred of a clan of vampires. The entire political equilibrium of the town, fraught as it is, depends on Benvolio surviving the night. That’s politics, but Atticus is having a hard time caring about politics right now. A world without Benvolio in it seems almost too dark a thought to contemplate, too great a loss for anything to ever be good and right again after. What has Benvolio ever done to deserve dying like this? He can’t, not while Atticus is here to do something about it, if only he knew what to do to help. But how can he help when what Benvolio needs is to have more blood inside him?

More. Right. Atticus walks to his desk in a daze, arriving without remembering the way, and he’s picked up the water multiplication spell, and he needs to replace the variables for water with blood, but what elements is blood even made of? Water, iron, cells made of carbon and nitrogen and more water elements, what else? He leafs through his biomancy notes until he finds the list he copied from a book, containing all elements found in blood and their relative percentage. It’s a long list, but the largest percentages go to common elements, it’s only very small amounts of the rare stuff, and anyway he doesn’t need to know the exact composition to perform the spell, he can take that from the Command section of a healing spell. He only needs to know the elements to calculate how much energy it will take, but that can wait. He takes a new sheet of paper and starts drafting the spell, looks up the blood variable, keeps drafting. How much more blood will he need? Double? What if that’s too much? He’ll increase the amount by a third, that should help already, and seeing the bad shape Benvolio is in he lost at least that much. Done, checking over the spell construction. Looks airtight. Time to bite the bullet and calculate the approximate energy requirement. He starts adding it up, swallows as the number shoots up fast. Keeps adding and multiplying, all the way to the end.

It’s too much. Atticus is tired already from the healing spell, but this is more than he could muster even well-rested and feeling daring. He feels despair sneaking up on him and furiously blinks back tears, there’s no use crying but fuck, if only he had a familiar, it would be tight but they might manage. Fuck.

Deep breath. Paris is out of town, Mercutio is fuck knows where, there’s only one person he can ask for help. “I hate telepathy,” he mumbles, “I hate it so fucking much.” Time to try anyway.

_Valentine? Can you hear me?_

No reply. It has to work though, it just has to, and Atticus pours all his will and desperation into the connection he hopes is there.

_I need your help, someone’s dying and my energy is not enough to heal them._

And once again for good measure, even though he thinks he can feel the connection fray already, if that’s even the right word because Atticus knows fuck all about fucking telepathy—

_I NEED HELP! HELP!!_

Still no reply. Fucking Valentine. Atticus looks around the room, and there’s the terrarium with the frogs. He walks over and looks at them. He built that terrarium himself, with his grandfather giving directions, explaining how it would mimic the frogs’ natural way of living, so they would stay healthy and content. They look fairly content, as far as he can tell, all five of them.

Killing animals to harvest their energy is mostly considered dark magic these days. It didn’t use to be that way, old man Septimus would only have frowned at the killing of humans, and probably only certain classes of human at that. Atticus’ grandfather actually learned about animal husbandry in order to ensure a steady supply of living energy storage, but by the time Atticus came around, he seems to have kept it up for the sake of tradition, not for sacrificial purposes. Atticus cares a lot about his frogs, but he cares more about Benvolio not dying.

_He’s coming._

Who’s coming? Fucking Valentine, always with the dramatics. No matter, someone is coming, someone will help, so Atticus takes that as permission to leave his frogs be and pace around the study instead. Someone better hurry up, because Benvolio still isn’t looking any better than he did when they brought him in.

He turns in the direction of the footsteps, and then Mercutio’s voice is telling the guards outside the door: “His Grace sent for me, let me in.”

“I did,” Atticus says, opening the door and waving his nephew in. Mercutio looks like he just ran a considerable distance in the rain, his drenched weasel climbing up and down his arms in agitation as he goes to take a look at Benvolio.

“Looks bad. What do we do?”

“Did Valentine send you?”

“Do you have a fucking plan or do I have to do all the work myself?” Alright, that’s an ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ if Atticus ever heard one. But he has a point, they don’t have much time.

“I have a spell that should help, but I need you to donate some energy. A lot of energy, actually.”

“Good,” Mercutio says, without gracing the spell plan Atticus is offering with so much as a glance, “let’s go.”

They both kneel next to the bed, and Atticus lays the spell plan out on the sheet in front of him before taking Mercutio’s hand. Deep breath, and go.

Invocation. Command. Restriction. Charge. Activation.

Please let it work.

The energy drain is stronger than any he ever felt, and it’s growing by the second until it feels like a river flowing out of him, being ripped out of every cell, right until he feels he’s about to pass out. He tugs on Mercutio’s reserves and is given permission immediately, energy coursing through him once more except this time it’s not his own. It feels like fizzy wine bubbling and running in his veins, acid on his tongue and a faint smell of burning wood in his nose— is this what magic naturally feels like to Mercutio, or is it only doing that because his body is not the right conductor? He can feel Mercutio starting to run low as well, with the weasel sitting ready to pitch in, when the pull finally weakens, dwindles, stops.

He lets go of Mercutio’s hand, but it takes him a while to summon the will to stand up despite his exhaustion. The world is swimming around him as he leans down to check on Benvolio, but Benvolio is looking better, gaining color as they’re watching, and that’s all that matters. His pulse is slowing down at the same time as his breathing.

“I think he’ll make it,” Atticus says, “at least until the medic can say for sure tomorrow morning. Thank you.”

“Didn’t do it for you,” is all Mercutio says, swaying where he stands. “You think I like to stand around and watch my friends die?”

Atticus is too tired for pointless arguments. “You can sleep in your rooms tonight, you look tired.”

“Oh wow, thanks for the gracious permission, Atticus, so kind of you not to throw me out on the street,” Mercutio grumbles, already on his way to the door, “you’re a true father to us all.” Atticus lets him have the last word, and so instead of being here all night Mercutio leaves.

Atticus should probably go to his own bed too, but he’s not quite ready to let Benvolio out of his sight, just in case his condition suddenly goes bad again. Also going to his rooms would take effort, more than he can muster up right now. He’s so tired. He drags the chair with his robe slung over the back from the bedside back to his desk, and sits down like he’s never going to get up again.

Biomancy. Huh. Not a bad choice actually, in a city intent on destroying itself. Maybe he can figure out how to increase blood to keep the Capulets fed and too full to get on his case. Maybe he can inoculate people against werewolf bites. Maybe he can make sure no human gets harmed in this stupid age-old feud. His head is heavy, and he rests it on his folded arms on the desktop. His eyes are burning, so he closes them. Biomancy and Alchemy, and he always liked potions. He may not be able to bring peace to the city, but maybe he can heal some of its wounds.

As he drifts off, he can hear his own heartbeat in the back of his head. Weird, there seem to be two of them. Atticus sleeps.


	6. Pack

He wakes up fully aware that Benvolio is right behind him. Sure enough, when he lifts his head up from his arms there’s one naked Montague, on his way to the door.

“Leaving already?” Benvolio startles.

“Yeah, I uh, was going to get something to eat, I’m starving.”

“There’s guards on the other side of that door, but I’ll have something brought here.” He stretches (his choice of sleeping position really did not agree with his back), then channels his very best princely mien to walk past Benvolio like he was fully clothed. The guards have changed at some point early in the morning, and Atticus relieves them of their duty with the order that someone needs to bring some breakfast and a set of clothes.

When he closes the door again, Benvolio has returned to the bed, sitting with a bedsheet modestly pulled over his lap. Very considerate of him. Atticus returns to his chair, on the opposite side of the room. Not awkward at all.

“The medic is going to be here soon, but I take it you’re feeling better?”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine. Werewolf regeneration, you know.”

“That and some magical healing to help you over the worst of it. You should thank Mercutio the next time you see him.”

“Mercutio healed me?”

“Well, I wrote the spell, but I couldn’t have done it without Mercutio pitching in for some extra energy.” Atticus is still not going to be able to cast spells for at least a few more days, his reserves are completely dry.

“Huh. I owe you both then. Thank you.”

“Of course.” Benvolio is being polite, but it seems so silly not to take saving Benvolio’s life for granted. What else was Atticus supposed to do, stand by and let him die?

“Don’t you need to check on the results though, for science?”

Atticus is still not entirely awake, so by the time he realizes Benvolio is joking he’s already halfway across the room, too far to turn back without making a fool of himself. Benvolio does him the favour of playing along, solemnly offering up his wrist to have his pulse taken. Slightly elevated, probably, but still within normal range. The fact that Benvolio is naked was of no importance yesterday, when all that mattered was to drag him back into the realm of the living by hook or by crook, but it’s impossible to ignore right now.

“All good,” he says, eyes on the least incriminating bit of bedsheet he can find.

“I think the wound is all healed, too, see?” There is absolutely no reason for Atticus to touch the inner side of the arm Benvolio is offering, but it’s offered with such open trust that refusing seems more rude than complying.

“Do you think I’ll get to keep a scar?” Benvolio asks, unfazed by Atticus tracing along the site of the wound like that’s somehow a serious medical examination, when he’s barely touching at all.

“Not a noticeable one, I don’t think.” The new skin is barely raised under his fingertips. It’s tender, and warm, and mercifully unlike the clammy coolness of yesterday.

“Pity, I’d like one to show off.” Atticus doesn’t quite know what to say to that, he’s too busy with not looking, at anything, but Benvolio doesn’t wait for a reply. “So, this might come out sounding rude, in human terms, but...”

“What is it?” Finally Atticus can take his hand away, but when he tries stepping backwards and away, Benvolio catches hold of his shirt sleeve, then waves him closer again, like he’s about to tell a secret.

“I know you said not to say this, but I can smell emotions, a little, not as good in humans as in wolves. Just the basic stuff, anything that gets up the heartbeat or has people sweating more. You know.” Atticus jerks his gaze up to Benvolio’s face, jaw clenched, ready to deny whatever accusation will come next. Benvolio however is smiling, and it’s not a nasty smile at all. “Don’t worry, it’s alright.” He’s saying this, relaxed and stark naked in what is technically Atticus’ bed, so really, Atticus could be forgiven for assuming— “Really. It’s alright.”

This is the part where Atticus accepts the invitation and is allowed to touch again, without a pretext this time. And the heavens will open up, the angels will sing for them specifically, and all will be well in this world and the next. Except there’s a reason Atticus has spent the eleven months since becoming Prince working and studying and working some more, in hopes of finally catching up to what a Prince should be. He’s only allowed himself to eat and sleep, grudgingly, because it keeps his brain going so he can study more, work harder, and maybe earn himself the odd hour off, one day, as soon as he has ever done enough. This, what Benvolio is offering? It’s for people who have nothing else to do.

Atticus steps back. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He has work. He is work, what else are Princes even good for other than working for their people, and Atticus isn’t even a very good Prince at that. He turns towards his desk so he doesn’t have to look at Benvolio’s face, and reminds himself that if he ever feels like wasting time getting off, he needs to pick someone who’s neither Montague nor Capulet, and definitely not someone adopted by Lady Montague herself.

“I think you do,” Benvolio is saying, “Atticus.”

“No,” Atticus says, and this is the part where he turns this ludicrous conversation into something productive, “not ‘Atticus’. You’re here as a hostage, you’re addressing your Prince, and I want to know,” he’s sufficiently solidified the Prince persona to turn back around and look at Benvolio with nothing but professional interest, “who used that dagger on you, because Tybalt Capulet’s life is on the line.”

Benvolio looks gobsmacked. “Tybalt is here?”

“I’m asking the questions, and that’s ‘Your Grace’ to you. Who gave you that cut?”

“I don’t know. Your Grace.” He’s no longer smiling. Good.

“You don’t know? Someone rammed a dagger into your arm and you’re telling me you don’t know who did it?”

“They teleported, three or more at once, I was in the middle of a bunch of people, and things got messy. I don’t think they were targeting me either, my arm must have gotten in the way. Your Grace.”

“Who do you think was the target then?”

Benvolio shrugs. “Your Grace.”

“Who was with you?”

“No idea, we were moving around so fast. Your Grace.”

Atticus is about to ask if Benvolio really thinks he's that stupid, when they are interrupted by the arrival of breakfast and the set of clothes he had the guard ask for— they’re his own, since him and Benvolio are about the same size; not the newest, but nowhere near threadbare, lest anyone dare claim Atticus doesn’t know how to treat high-ranking visiting hostages. He wishes he’d asked for someone else’s clothes, anyone else.

After Benvolio has dressed (Atticus strategically starts sorting his papers and organizing his desktop) and breakfasted (the kitchens sent enough for two, but Atticus isn’t hungry and Benvolio has no compunctions about finishing every last morsel), the medic returns for a much more impersonal checkup, declaring the patient to be back in full health. “As I said,” he tells Atticus, “werewolves are tough.” Atticus nods politely and sends the man on his way.

There’s an awkward pause.

“So,” Benvolio finally says, and Atticus can tell he’s keeping his tone as neutral as he can, “can I go now, Your Grace?”

“No,” Atticus tells him, even though he has given up on getting him to name any names about the dagger, and he’ll have to have Tybalt released soon. “I have one more thing to ask.”

Benvolio makes a ‘go ahead’ kind of gesture.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were the dog in my backyard?”

Benvolio blinks. “Wait, you didn’t know that?”

“No,” Atticus says snidely, “I was under the impression that a werewolf is someone who turns into a _wolf_, not a dog.”

“Yeah, well, I’m adopted.”

“Amazing, I had no idea! What the hell has that got to do with being a dog instead of a wolf?”

“That’s how it works! First generation weres are dogs, second generation is wolfdogs, third and onwards is wolves! Didn’t… you know that?”

“Obviously not,” Atticus says, feeling embarrassed about his outburst already. Poise, he thinks, pull yourself together. “So about… the things you may have heard, as a dog. In the backyard.” He really doesn’t need all of Verona knowing their Prince is desperate enough for a familiar to talk to random strays.

“Ah yes, the things you told me. While I was a dog. With a dog brain. Let me guess, it was something about ham sandwiches? Secret magic ham sandwiches?”

Atticus should be mad about the lack of protocol following going on, but he’s too busy feeling pretty damn stupid right now. “You’re telling me you don’t remember?”

Benvolio shrugs. “If you’d been telling state secrets to a proper wolf you’d have a problem, because they would have understood and remembered. When I’m a dog, all I hear is whether a voice sounds like a friend or a danger, anything higher than that is too much work. You know, for a dog.”

“Right,” Atticus says, “well, so much for that issue.”

“Um,” Benvolio says, “there’s one more thing actually. I just remembered.”

“Yes?”

“You might want to sit down for that one.” That sounds deeply ominous.

“Just tell me!”

“You saved my life.”

“Yes, and you already thanked me for it, so let’s not mention it again.”

“Let me finish. You saved my life, so now you’re part of the pack.”

“What?” Atticus really has to sit down for that one. “You mean, honorary pack member? Because that’s, that’s great and all, but I can’t possibly— “

“No, I meant pack member as in pack member. You’re one of us now, except human.”

“What… does that even mean? Is Lady Montague my boss now, or what?”

“Well… technically maybe your co-boss, in pack matters only. Uh, I don’t think there’s precedent for that, you’d have to discuss it with her.”

“I’m doing no such thing, she can be boss of her own pack and I’ll be Prince of Verona and that’s that.”

“Great, I’ll tell her! You’ll also get wolf sense.” When Atticus only looks at him quizzically, Benvolio clarifies: “You know, werewolf telepathy.”

“Uh,” Atticus wants to say something, but his mind is pulling a blank. He finally settles on: “No.”

“Yes. Yours should be weaker than a were’s, and it’ll take a while to get used to it, but you should be able to feel our presence and stuff. Ask Mercutio for pointers.”

“Wait, Mercutio is a member of the Montague pack?!”

“Duh, why do you think we let him sleep in our mansion?”

“He sleeps in your mansion?!”

“...Actually, maybe you weren’t supposed to know that.”

Atticus doesn’t even know where to begin expressing his disagreement with this entire situation. “I can’t be a member of the Montague pack, I’m the Prince for Pete’s sake.” He buries his face in his hands. “The Capulets will revolt. I’ll have to let Paris marry a fucking vampire like he’s been pestering me to.” He looks up quickly. “You didn’t hear that.”

“No problem, must’ve switched to dog brain for a second there.”

“How can I leave the pack?”

“You can’t. You’d have to kill someone.”

“Yeah no, that won’t make me a more balanced ruler either. Fuck.”

“Hey, you’ll find a way.” Benvolio leans against the desk and reaches out a hand like he wants to pat Atticus’ shoulder, but thinks better of it. “Your Grace.” It’s such a bizarrely out of place appellation Atticus can’t help but laugh, even if it’s not especially mirthful. “And having wolf sense is really cool, actually.”

Atticus shakes his head. “I hate telepathy, and I’m not very good at it either.”

“It takes practice, but once you get the hang of it you’ll never feel alone again.” Benvolio is smiling at him like a well-meaning teacher at a discouraged pupil, and Atticus feels thoroughly humiliated. “I can come practice with you.”

“What, we’re going to play hide-and-seek in the palace so I can practice my detection skills?” Just what he needed for that princely dignity he’s been lacking. “Thanks, but I’ll stick to ignoring it as best I can. I don’t need anyone messing around in my head.”

“I can feel you right now.”

“What?”

“It’s very faint, but since I’m close by you’re definitely… there. I’m not messing around, I have no idea what you’re thinking, I promise.” Benvolio looks at him earnestly. “Try it. You should be able to close your eyes and still know I’m here.”

“Of course I know you’re here, I have object permanence, you know.” Benvolio is still looking at him. “Are you making puppy eyes at me right now? Fine, alright, I’ll try, but I’m bad at it.” He closes his eyes and heaves an exasperated breath. Well, here goes nothing. Benvolio is definitely standing next to him, which Atticus knows because that’s where he last saw him. This is extremely redundant. He hears his own heartbeat, which normally isn’t a thing when he’s just sitting down— wait a minute. He reaches out blindly for Benvolio’s wrist. Distinguishing someone else’s pulse from your own is always a difficulty, but he’s pretty sure that’s not his own he can hear. He opens his eyes to look at Benvolio in silent amazement.

“Oh hey, am I disturbing a moment?” Atticus flinches at Mercutio’s voice from the door, and snatches his hand away from Benvolio’s wrist. “Benvolio celebrating his return from the dead I see.”

“I hear you’re partly to blame for that,” Benvolio says, and Atticus could swear he sees the imp flash across his face before he switches from light irony to painful earnestness: “Thank you so much, I always knew you were a true friend as well as a fantastic magician.”

Atticus knows Mercutio doesn’t do well with positive attention, but he’s never seen anyone wield that as a weapon with this much precision. Mercutio cringes like a worm caught on a hook, lost for words (Mercutio! Silent!) before finally settling on “Flattery will get you everywhere, but you’re still not my type.”

Atticus intercepts before he can turn that topic back to matters outside the realm of his business: “Since you’re apparently part of the Montague pack, I take it that’s not your first act of heroism?”

“Oh, you’re in the club now too? Old Capulet is going to love hearing that I bet.”

“You don’t actually have to save anyone’s life to get accepted into the pack,” Benvolio explains, “there’s… other ways.” Judging by Mercutio’s leery face, Atticus does not want to know, so he just nods.

“Well,” time to put on the princely voice once again, even if Mercutio is bound to roll his eyes, “Her Ladyship will no doubt be glad to see you well. Dismissed.”

“Bye, Your Grace,” Benvolio says, and mercifully takes Mercutio by the arm to leave with him.

“You know my uncle is as likely to fuck you as Old Capulet, right?” he still hears Mercutio say, goddamn him. “About as good in bed probably.”

“You know you smell like Tybalt from a mile away, right?” Benvolio says.

“Vampires are social creatures. His Grace was keeping the poor man in solitary confinement…” and they’re out of earshot, thank heaven.

Right, Atticus still has to set Tybalt free, but he’d better do that after Benvolio has had time to get off the palace grounds. That leaves one more responsibility. Ugh.

_Valentine? Thank you._

No answer. Of course.

Atticus sits back down at his desk. There’s always something more to study.


	7. Window

On a branch outside the window, a crow is looking in. The young Prince of Verona is sitting in his study, making notes while reading a book. The crow considers him for a while, then it uses a little stick to tap at the window. The Prince looks up. He looks tired, but not especially surprised. After a short silence, he gets up to open the window.


End file.
